Jasmine Lime Iced Cooler
Wanwanha and another friend of mine recommended Peet’s Jasmine Lime Iced Cooler to me as I’m a tea addict. Peet’s describes it as follows: “Jasmine scented green tea is mixed with refreshing limeade and served over ice.” I tried it for the first time today and sure enough, I like it. I like it a lot. It’s very refreshing. As it enters your mouth, the limeade dominates your taste buds. But after you swallow, the tea comes up strong and crisp. It’s an interesting blend of flavors. My only complaint is that they put too much ice. Maybe it’s just the girl who made it for me this time that put too much ice. The ice filled about 90% of the cup and left room for just 10% tea. After a few swigs of my Small cup, I ran out of tea already. I was a little disappointed cuz I was still craving for more. Since I like this drink so much, I’m definitely buying it again. Next time I’ll ask for more ice.

Transformers
If you are looking for a good time at the movies this summer, I highly recommend Transformers. For the price of admission, you get 2 hours and 20 minutes of action, fun, and humor. As a kid in the 80s, I loved the Transformers cartoons and action figures. Heroic Optimus Prime and adorable Bumblebee were my favorite and probably many people’s favorites. They’re back in this 2007 summer blockbuster and to no disappointment to this old time fan. From the very beginning scene to the last, the movie is action packed and humor packed. While I expected the action, I didn’t expect the witty humor. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Besides the action and humor, other elements of a good movie such as realistic CG, good acting (especially from young Shia LaBeouf), and fitting soundtrack, all came together in this one and gave me the best time I’ve had at the movies in a long time. I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

Half a star is subtracted for the overuse of product placements. The entire movie is a Chevy commercial. Even Bumblebee somehow became a Chevy Camero instead of the VW Buggy. That aside, there were also numerous references to Ebay and a few shots of its website. Apple’s MacBook laptop appeared onscreen two or three times. Then there was a reference to a Nokia cell phone and a quick shot of a Panasonic SD card. If your Marketing 101 instructor gives you an assignment to point out some of the products placed into this film, you will have no trouble coming up with all I’ve mentioned. They were just too blatantly obvious.

As Chevy was a big sponsor of the film, it was not surprising that some of the cars that ended up being destroyed happened to be BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, and Volvos. Figure that.

Though there was a bit of a “cheesy” factor in some of the dialogue, it didn’t amount to much. It was not enough to take away from all the positives that made this movie as good as it is.

Abuse of Executive Power
Here we go again, another blatant disregard of the law. Bush insists his executive authority trumps all else. (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/20/MNG52R3U681.DTL) After using executive power to commute Libby, he once again abuses his authority, this time to prevent the Justice Department from pursuing contempt charges against White House officials involved with the wrongful firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year. Bush once again tells the U.S. public, “Screw all of you. Whatever I say goes.”

Words to describe my general feelings right now: Astonished, Annoyed, Disbelief, Frustrated, and most of all PISSED OFF.

I don't know much about laws and politics. My question now is how and when can we charge Bush for contempt. Forget about his friends and pawns in the White House, we need to go after him.

The Wii
My fiancé and I have been hooked on the Wii since he bought it about three weeks ago. Every night after dinner and before going to bed we are playing on the Wii. In place of surfing the web and watching TV, we play tennis, baseball and bowling; we train on various training exercises; and we take a daily fitness test to find our “Wii Age”. So rather than sitting motionless in front of the computer or TV, we are swinging our arms in response to the various sporting requirements. Clicking on a mouse or a television remote doesn’t constitute as bona fide motion if you ask me. Swinging your arm with the Wii controller to simulate sports play doesn’t constitute as bona fide exercise either if you ask real athletes, but at least the motion is bigger AND sometimes we actually do break out in a sweat, especially when we engage ourselves in a heated match of tennis. It’s heated because I get mad at him every time he beats me, but that’s beside the point. The point is that we actually are moving more because of the Wii. It’s sad, but it’s true. And I dare say this is true for many of the other Wii owners out there. I highly praise Nintendo for developing this console and all its interactive games.

Now I patiently but eagerly await the release of a new game called Wii Fit. Combined with a new controller called the Wii Balance Board, players can engage themselves into heart-healthy activities as:

• Yoga exercise
• Step aerobics, including a game in which the player steps on and off the Wii Balance Board in rhythm to the background music
• Hitting on-coming soccer balls by leaning forward
• Press ups
• Hula hoopping
• Ski Jumping, in which the player squats as low as possible while maintaining balance and then quickly stands as fast as possible to gain a good jump

The steps aerobics game sounds similar to the Sony PlayStation’s old Dance Dance Revolution. The concept of stepping to a musical rhythm sounds similar even though one has a dancing connotation while the other simulates aerobic exercise. If this is true, I definitely will be playing the Wii steps aerobics often. Back in the heydays of DDR, I was a hard-core fan and “danced” out a sweat almost every night. I still have that game tucked behind our main entertainment unit and I can switch out the Wii for the PlayStation anytime I fancy a good dance. But if I can get the same sort of exercise/satisfaction with the Wii, why go through the trouble of switching? On this note, I hope Nintendo develops more active games for the health of all its gamers.

My oh my. It's been almost a year since I last blogged. I'm surprised this account is still active. I'm glad it is. Would definitely hate to lose everything I posted in the past.

I was writing a review on Yelp today and thought, "this review sounds like my old rants on Blogger". So here I am, logging in for the first time in a year and about to rant once again. Here goes...

I'm a big fan of the original Osha on Geary, but I have to express my disappointment with the one on 2nd Street. This one serves the same kind of food but for couple bucks more. While that eats into my pocketbook, it's understandable given the posher location in the SOMA area. What is NOT understandable or tolerable is the poor management demonstrated at this location. I was there with 5 friends a couple of weeks ago for lunch. The place was packed and we had to wait for a table for 6. No problem. We waited, and waited, and saw smaller parties after smaller parties pass us by and get seated first. The final straw was 30 minutes later when two 4-seater tables opened up right next to each other and the most obvious thing to do was to pull them together to seat the 6 of us hungry and late-to-return-to-work souls. Nope, the manager didn't think so. He let 3 women who just walked through the doors take one of those tables and left the other one empty! Empty! While we continued to wait to be seated! After already waiting 30 minutes! It was another 5 minutes or so before we finally got seated. I wanted to complain really badly but refrained from doing so in fear of retribution from the kitchen crew.

Mr. Manager at Osha on 2nd Street: Three blocks from you is City College's downtown campus. Enroll yourself in the Hotel/Restaurant Management course cuz you sure have lots to learn in that realm.